A known technique of sharing printers mutually connects a plurality of client personal computers and a plurality of printers via a network. One example of such configuration provides each printer with an internal or external print server. This allows connection of the respective printers to the network via their print servers. Each of the print servers supports the spool function to process print jobs output from multiple client personal computers. The print server takes advantage of the spool function and successively outputs the stored print jobs to the corresponding printer, which carries out printing in response to each print job.
In the event that a number of print jobs output from a plurality of client personal computers are sent to one printer in a concentrated manner, the prior art technique requires a long time to start printing with regard to a print job at the end of the long queue and thus delays completion of printing.
The object of the present invention is thus to complete printing as quickly as possible even when a number of print jobs are concentrated on one printer.